President of Public Agenda. For more, see public_agenda tag.

From their "What is Public Agenda" page, "Public Agenda, an innovative public opinion research and public engagement organization, works to strengthen our democracy's capacity to tackle tough public policy issues." For more, follow tag "public_agenda"

"Based at New York University, the Institute brings together 14 game designers, computer scientists, and education researchers from 9 partner institutions, including Columbia, City University of New York, Dartmouth, NYU, NYU-Poly, Parsons, Chile's Pontifica Universidad Catolica, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Teacher's College. "

Posted by George Siemens on his blog elearnspace, September 5 2011. Siemens argues that instructors can't provide "coherence" for knowledge just by "broadcasting" a course. He suggests that coherence is about how "*we* connect information elements and how we use artifacts and narratives to share that coherence." I am interested in the idea of "information foraging," especially in the context of content curation.

Presented on P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University), "a grassroots open education project," this new course on online, self-directed learning is being presented by Anya Kamenetz. In this particular course, participants are directed through the processes of writing a personal learning plan, building a personal learning network, and finding a mentor, all while sharing the process with their fellow learners. Unlike many of the other P2PU courses (which have a more topical focus), this is open to those who want to learn on any subject.

Posted by Stephen Downes, 2001, this guide is written as a Wiki, with an invitation for users to participate, adding their own experiences. The chapters are roughly chronological, with each describing a MOOC, it's learning goals, and any innovations that it included. This guide can be helpful in understanding the concept of MOOCs, and also in planning a MOOC of one's own.

from the U.S. Department of Education. Plan calls for applying the advanced technologies used personally and professionally to the U.S.'s entire education system. The plan presents five goals with recommendations for states, districts, the federal government, and other stakeholders. Goals address the five essential components of learning powered by technology: Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure and Productivity. This page has a link to the plan (PDF).

Presentation was part of Ignite Great Lakes, July 30 2011. Maria Anderson is a futurist and math professor at Muskegon Community College. It's not enough to bookmark (or digitally hoard); we need a "learn this" button. Essentially, this is a more efficient bookmarking system where we revisit sites of interest and actually ask ourselves questions about the topics.

This MOOC is being developed by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier. For this particular MOOC, they will be introducing over 30 speaker/instructors (one a week) with a global perspective (faculty representing 11 countries). Links to course registration, outline and other details from this page.

By Jonathan D. Becker on his blog, Educational Insanity, August 9 2011. Becker makes recommendations not just on how we should reform education, but also why. And how we should talk about it. Thought-provoking.

Links on this page for the Proceedings, abstracts, and conference guide.

By Kim Parker, Amanda Lenhart and Kathleen Moore, published by the Pew Research Center/Pew Social & Demographic Trends, August 28, 2011. The big take-away seems to be that 51% of college presidents surveyed find that "online courses offer an equal educational value compared with courses taken in a classroom," but only 29% of the general public agrees with this statement.

No author or date listed, this blog posts promotes a guide to Google+ for educators, written by Steven W. Anderson. I bookmark this post for two reasons. First, obviously, the opportunity for educators to learn more about Google+ and it's potential educational applications. But also the format, LiveBinder, is an interesting way to present and share resources.

"The "AI Commons" is a worldwide portal devoted to the fullest sharing of academic resources and practical tools on Appreciative Inquiry and the rapidly growing discipline of positive change..." The site is hosted by Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management.

By cmcraft (Dr. Chris Craft) on his blog, Crucial Thought. Craft posts his criticisms of 2.0 and his experience transitioning to Haiku.

Note that Craft works with 6th graders, so his use of Moodle is quite different from ours.

This course, offered by P2PU (Peer to Peer University) looks at Mozilla's upcoming release of an Open Badges framework and asks questions about how community/peer-rated online badges might stand in for more formal assessment/recognition of learning, particularly in new or non-traditional fields. This is formally a 4-week course which began August 13 2011.

Sharing both for the look & feel of this course and for the ideas around "badge" assessment.

Pfizer's Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (Translating Leading Science into Clinical Candidates Through Networked Collaboration) is dedicated to the establishment of global partnerships between Academic Medical Centers and Pfizer to transform research and development through a focus on translational medicine.

By Rick Mullin on Chemical & Engineering News, June 13, 2011. Pfizer announced the third in its network of research partnerships with medical and academic institutions in and around Boston. The new partnership will join other hubs in Pfizer's Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) which launched last year. "Pfizer's partnership network is growing as the company cuts billions of dollars from its traditional research base"

Announcement of a grant from the Mellon Foundation for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington to underwrite the Digital Humanities Commons.. "The Commons will enable faculty and graduate students to collaborate together with librarians, engineers and designers to animate their scholarship with new visualization tools and dynamic databases..."

Organization "brings together game design, rigorous research practices and strong interdisciplinary partnerships to create, study and promote game-based materials, strategies and systems as critical tools for personal and social development."